(Nota bene: The image above is AI generated. Also, I wrote this piece before church this morning, but didn’t have time to edit and post before I had to go. Unsurprisingly, both Los Angeles and Jimmy Carter’s funeral were mentioned during the service).
It’s been a week of death and disaster. Bone-dry Los Angeles is burning, with no end in sight as the Santa Ana winds pick up again. And this week we learned that last year was the tenth in a row of hottest years on record.
But we also saw Jimmy Carter’s funeral, which reminded everyone how one person, albeit with a very prominent platform, could truly change the world for the better.
Having accomplished the Camp David accords and the SALT II treaty as President, Carter was in a unique position to make a difference when his presidency ended. Like other past presidents, he wrote books, but he also used his platform to address health crises in forgotten places. His work reduced a painful parasitic disease that had affected over three million people annually to a case count last year of something like 14, according to his grandson, Jason, who gave a moving eulogy at Carter’s funeral last Thursday.
He took up a hammer and built houses for Habitat for Humanity. He monitored elections across the globe. He won the Nobel Peace Prize.
So what can a little old short fat widow like me do, in terms of making a difference, against the overwhelming forces of impending doom?
I’ve been trying to reduce my carbon footprint. My home has hot water heat, a gas boiler, and a gas range, but I now use an electric kettle, a microwave, and an air fryer (which is basically a mini-electric convection oven) to make most meals. I’m hoping to find an affordable way to replace my ten-year-old Subaru with a new hybrid car.
In the winter, I keep the thermostat at 66-67 degrees (64 at night) and wear a sweater indoors. In the summer I grow pollinator plants and organic (as much as I can make them) vegetables. I don’t waste water irrigating my lawn – I’m trying to downsize and gradually replace it with low-maintenance ground cover or drought resistant native grasses and plants.
My handy brother installed a rain barrel for me for my birthday, which I use to water my front patio memorial garden when the summer drought hits, as it has for the past several years — there’s been very little rain after the Fourth of July through Labor Day.
I don’t fly anymore. I used to take 12-20 round trip flights a year for work plus vacations (that’s 24 to 40 individual flights). If I ever can afford to go on vacation again, I hope to take a train or a sailing ship.
I bring a few canned goods, a box of diapers, and a package of feminine hygiene supplies to church on the first Sunday of the month for distribution to local food banks that supply people in need, when I remember to do it, which isn’t often enough.
These meager efforts are a grain of sand compared to the things Jimmy Carter, not to mention most other members of my church, have accomplished. I don’t get my hands dirty out there feeding the homeless or visiting the sick. My OCD generated germ-freak side causes me to recoil from direct contact with many of the people I should be serving. I feel useless, powerless, hypocritical, and ineffective, but I make excuses for myself, thinking at least I’m doing something.
As I look at the devastation in Los Angeles though, I think damn, this is going to take way more than millions of little people like me going electric and contributing to food banks. Wildfire smoke pours millions of tons of toxic substances and carbon into the air, contributing to global warming and negating as much as a quarter of the progress states like California and others have made to reduce carbon emissions. The debris from from such fires pollutes groundwater, renders surviving homes toxic, and makes returning to devastated areas even more difficult.
LA already had a serious homelessness problem and a housing shortage. Now, thousands more people must find a new place to live, while simultaneously fighting with insurance companies to finance rebuilding or relocation.
And what about rebuilding? I’m reminded of a scene a Tom Robbins novel (I think), where Native Americans observe, with astonishment, white folks rebuilding San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. In the scene, they wondered something like “how much more of a sign from the gods do you crazy ass white people need to understand you’re supposed to get the hell out of San Francisco?“
While some coastal towns and villages on the east coast and in small Pacific island nations contemplate “managed retreat” from the seaside or even total relocation to the mainland, I don’t think many people in Los Angeles will give up on California and relocate. Which makes it very likely that those who rebuild destroyed homes will, within their lifetimes, lose everything again, to fire, sea level rise, flood, or earthquakes. So is rebuilding denial, or is it hope?
The religious tradition I adopted in adulthood teaches good stewardship, defined as taking loving care of God’s creation, meaning the Earth itself and the people on it.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
What’s left of it, I suppose. So much for good stewardship.
Trying to do my teeny-tiny-bit-while-filling-gallon-sized-water-jugs-to-stow-in-the-basement-and-contemplating-ordering-a-5-gallon-bucket-of-dehydrated-food, I remain,
your grateful to live near a Great Lake but worried about its future while pathetically prepping,
Ridiculouswoman
You reflect on much of what I am going through. Every time I use non-recyclable plastic containers to eat take-out from the dining room of my retirement community, I cringe a little. And our community is very aware of endeavoring to reduce our carbon/plastic/non-sustainable footprint as much as possible. We have dark-light lighting on all our paths for the 350 of us elders, we add tons of compost to our local town’s composting efforts, etc. Yet and yet- I am part of a consumer society that makes the years that my husband and I spent as homesteaders growing as much of what we ate ourselves as teeny tiny drops in a bucket with a large hole in the bottom. The greatness of Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi- all heroes in their troubled countries- show us there is light despite the wave of darkness and ignorance sweeping through the world. I join you in doing practical things for others as I can in my own small life, and weep with, and send love to, all the suffering millions on this planet. Joining with light wherever we can.
I reflect on many of the same things you wrote in your piece. Our own efforts seem so small and we dwell in a very consumer oriented society. Capitalism is not easily redirected to saving our over burdened planet. All we can realistically do is what lies within our own spheres of life. The inspiration of the Jimmy Carters, Gandhis, and Nelson Mandelas of this world shone as great lights in each of their own troubled countries. I weep for millions, send love to all who are suffering and join with you and yet millions of others who also join their small lights for a darkening world.